All parents want to give their little ones the best possible start in life and whilst children all develop at a different rate, most, if not all, need a gentle push when it comes to skill development. But supposing your child either isn’t responding as well as expected for his or her age group and it’s becoming clear that perhaps that helping hand needs to be a little stronger? Whilst it might be tempting to put your child’s slower skill development down to being a ‘late learner’ there are things you can do to help nudge your child in the right direction.
As most parents will testify, children learn better when education is fun and games or toys are incorporated so it makes sense that if you want to speed up or enhance your child’s skill sets, using innovative and fun, yet educational toys, games or accessories is the best possible way forward.
Even something as typically frustrating as learning to write clearly and neatly can be improved with just the smallest of tools and if you’ve noticed that your child seems to lagging behind his or her peers when it comes to handwriting you might want to consider using a pencil grip. Poor handwriting is often a result of the pen or pencil being held incorrectly but by using a grip which holds the fingers and thumb in the correct position, your child’s hand will be correctly poised to improve their writing.
So what is a pencil grip and how can it help your child increase their legibility? Put simply the grip is a small piece of moulded plastic or rubber which slips over the top of the pen or pencil. As soon as your child holds the writing implement with the grip attached, thanks to the ergonomic shape, their fingers will be automatically placed in the correct position. From then on they can adapt the way they hold the pencil and thus begin to improve their writing.
Pencil grips come in a range of sizes making them suitable for both regular ‘adult-sized’ pencils and kiddie’s chunkier sized ones, which makes them perfect if you have a little one who is still pre-school age but whom you think may benefit from early training, whether that’s because they’re showing signs of slow development or just because you want to give them the best possible start when they do reach school age – and what parent wouldn’t want to do that!
Of course, children being children, many of them get embarrassed or shy about ‘being different’ or at least what they perceive as difference but the nice thing about pencil grips is that they come in a wide range of funky colours and actually look –dare we say it, pretty cool – something kids of today are seemingly concerned about from even the tenderest of years!
Many therapists advocate the use of a pencil grip when dealing with handwriting issues so if your child is struggling with messy handwriting, help them to help themselves with a grip. Not only will it make reading notes they’ve written easier for you anddeciphering their school work easier for their teacher but it will give their self-confidence a boost too.
Latest Articles in Other Education Category on EzineMark.com